we're insignificant and that's all right
by on rooftops
Summary: Her lips are soft and she's frozen. He pulls back after an instant—most people wouldn't even call it a kiss. — Lily/Teddy - M to be safe
1. spring

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Harry Potter.  
><em>**A/N:** So you know how I'm always like: _I'm done with Teddy/Lily forever and ever I can't even think about writing them again_? And then all of a sudden I'm writing Teddy/Lily like I'm possessed? Yeah, that happened again.  
>This will have four parts. I was going to make it a one-shot, but it hit 20 pages after Part III, so I decided to divide it. Also, warning: it's angsty.<p>

* * *

><p><span>spring<span>

Teddy feels old. He's standing at the front of Shell Cottage's expanded dining room with a flute of gold champagne in one hand, waiting for everyone to fall silent so he can begin the toast. He thinks that new lines have appeared across his face, creased into his forehead and between his eyebrows during the few seconds it takes for the room to be quiet.

When he finally speaks he doesn't sound nervous, even though his heart is hurtling toward a heart attack. He concentrates on keeping his voice steady and maintaining the natural brown colour of his hair and eyes. "I've known that I would be delivering this toast to you all for ages, probably before Graham and Victoire did." He readjusts his grip on the glass. "From the moment I first saw them together, I knew that they had something that not many people are granted," and given the number of couples in the room he realises that what he's about to say doesn't make much sense, but he can't change his speech now, "they had something that will last. And I'm so glad that I get to be the first to tell them congratulations. To Graham and to Victoire and to things that last." He sips a mouthful of fizz and the others in the room echo him and lift their glasses.

Dominique stands as he collapses back into his chair. She smoothes one hand down her silver dress and swirls the champagne in her glass, looking confident as she speaks about her wonderful sister and her amazing new brother-in-law. Teddy doesn't listen. He's heard it all before—wedding toast after wedding toast for the last six years—they never change. He's stolen his from Wesley and Veronica's wedding two years ago, and no one's even noticed. He stares into the bubbles bursting in his glass, wondering how he ended up here, with all these people he calls family, when he's still such a goddamn mess.

The champagne is so fascinating that he misses Dominique's cue and follows a syllable behind the rest, mumbling "To Graham and Vic" into his glass as he drinks. Dom returns to her seat beside Teddy and smiles at him as the rest of the room takes up the rhythm of conversation again.

"Glad that's over," she confesses.

"You have no idea." He glances around at the other circular tables crowded into the room and then back at Dom. "Any idea how long this shindig is going to last?"

She rolls her eyes and smacks him lightly on the arm. "Merlin, Ted, it's your best mate's wedding. You're supposed to _want_ to be here. Unless you've got a hot date tonight that none of us knows about?"

He laughs. "When have I ever dated someone you didn't know about?"

"Good point." She taps a manicured fingernail on the lace tablecloth and prompts, "So, why don't you want to be here, then?"

He doesn't want to tell her that he's longing for his flat, for the eight beers chilling in his fridge, the novel that he's only read one sentence of, and the roof with a blanket and a brilliant view of London. "It's not that I don't want to be here," he lies. "I've got an interview early tomorrow, and I want to get ready for it."

"An interview?" She leans in closer, her blue eyes wide with interest. "Good for you! I didn't know you were applying to other jobs."

"Yeah, the Ministry bit got a little old after...a month or two." Teddy grins at her. "Seeing as how I've stuck with it for years, I figured it was time to move on."

"What's the interview for?"

He shakes his head. "Sorry, Dom, that's a secret."

"Oh, come on," she begs. "Tell me. I swear I won't blurt it out, or anything."

"Nope. I don't want to jinx it."

She rolls her eyes. "Doesn't Graham know?"

Teddy glances over at his friend, whose hand covers Victoire's on the tablecloth. He's leaning close to her, whispering something into her ear, and she flushes, her blue eyes glinting as she elbows him and hisses, "Not here" through red lips.

Dominique's eyes are sympathetic when he turns back to her. "No, Graham doesn't know." He ignores the way she's looking at him. He knows what she's thinking, but it's an absurd thought, one he's stopped bothering to refute. "I told you, I don't want to jinx it."

"Fine," she pouts. "I'll find out when you get it, I suppose."

"You will." He glances at his watch. "So when are we supposed to move everyone into the living room for dancing?"

She looks around to see that the waiters and waitresses have taken most of the dishes from the tables around the room. "Now."

They stand and usher everyone from the dining room into the similarly expanded living room, where the band—some of Albus and James's mates from Hogwarts—have set up in the corner. The wood floor shines, reflecting the fairy lights strung across the rafters and the glimmer from the crystal sconces on the walls.

Teddy lingers by the bar, ordering a pint and sipping the bitter slowly as Graham and Victoire take their first dance and others eventually join them on the floor. He stands still, watching the dancers, although "dance" may be too kind a word for some of them. Harry and Ginny are out there and Harry looks sort of like his feet are magnetically stuck to the floor and he can only just shuffle them along.

A few feet away from Teddy their daughter, Lily Luna, leans against the wall. He hasn't seen her in years, it seems—she's never home during the holidays, choosing to spend them travelling with her friends or in Romania with Charlie, and she's speaking to Charlie tonight. Her uncle looks out of place among his family, and the way Lily's standing beside him makes Teddy think that she's protecting him from the worst sort of loneliness. She's saying something, so soft that Teddy can't make it out, but her uncle is laughing.

Teddy looks at her. Her deep green dress is too small, tight around the chest and the thighs and she's wearing flip-flops, pink ones that clash with the dress and her messy red ponytail. She's wearing a silver snake ring that looks plastic and the freckles sweep across her cheeks and down her nose un-obscured by any makeup. She looks like Charlie, Teddy realises—out of place and unwilling to admit it.

Dominique appears at his side. "Hey, old man, come dance with me?" she asks, taking his hand and pulling his attention away from his god-sister.

"Promise you won't ask about my interview?"

She grins up at him. "I'd forgotten about that. Now that you mention it, though..." He laughs and follows her onto the dance floor. Anything is better than standing lonely among his family.

Dominique falls into Roger Jordan's arms soon, though, and Teddy finds himself dancing with Dom's friends from school. His hand falls at silk-covered waist after silk-covered waist and he loses track of how many songs he's danced to by the time he slips away from Waverley Nott and out the front door.

The late spring air is cool around him; a breeze whisks from the shore and he wanders toward it, his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo trousers and his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness.

"Hey."

Teddy jumps and turns to his right. Lily sits on a rock, facing away from the ocean, her eyes bright in the light spilling from the windows of the Cottage.

"Hi."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." She scoots over on the rock. "You can sit if you want."

He hesitates. "What're you doing out here?"

She lifts a bottle in her right hand and tilts it so the amber Firewhiskey catches the light. "It's not quite as pathetic as it looks. Al and Score dragged me out here, but they've disappeared somewhere."

"Oh." He rubs the back of his neck.

"Want some?" She holds the bottle out to him and he can't refuse. He takes it and drops beside her as he tosses back a burning mouthful.

"What're you doing out here?" she asks after he's taken several more swigs and has returned the much emptier bottle to her rather sheepishly.

"Didn't feel like dancing anymore."

She taps the bottle against the rock they're sitting on and looks up at the house. The music sounds faint out here, lost beneath the rush of the waves behind them.

He can't bear the silence between them. He asks, "Is it hard for you, being here?"

"Why do you ask that?" She drinks from the bottle again and hands it back to him. It is light in his hand. They're getting close to something strange, he can feel it.

"I haven't seen you around your family in a long time," he tells her. "A really long time. You've changed a lot, even I can tell, and anyone will say that I'm not the most observant bloke out there. It must feel odd to be home and be around everyone, when you're so different."

"It's weird," she agrees. Her feet are bare now, and they're white in the half-darkness. She turns to look at him and he wonders whether her eyes would burn against his if it were lighter out. "How've I changed?"

"You're older." He wonders if she'll take that as a compliment. He wouldn't have.

She laughs. "God, Teddy, someone should give you a medal."

"But you're sadder," he continues, and her laugh snaps. "Why is that?"

"I'm not sad," she says. "It's just like you said, it's really weird being here. I've realised," and he knows she wouldn't be saying any of this if the empty bottle of Firewhiskey weren't at their feet, "that I've managed to push myself away from my family without even knowing that I was doing it."

He can't really think of anything to say, so he reaches for her hand where it taps on the rock and holds it in his. She tenses. "I guess that's part of growing up, though."

He silently agrees but his mind is too focused on the way her fingers feel small and fragile in his hand. There are calluses along her palm—burns from dragon fire, he assumes—and her skin is dry and cold. He wonders what she's feeling from him.

She doesn't pull away. "How about you? Is it hard for you?"

"What do you mean?" He knows, but he hopes she feels stupid elaborating because Merlin, why does everyone still think that he loves Vic?

"Seeing your best mate marry your ex. I mean, it must hurt, at least a little." She doesn't sound like she feels stupid.

"Not really. They've been dating for nine years, Lily. Vic and I only dated for one." If what they'd done even counted as dating. "I'm happy for them."

"That's good of you." People don't usually believe him, but she sounds like she does.

"Also," he's not sure what he's thinking or if he's thinking at all, "if I were with Vic, I wouldn't be able to do this," and he kisses her.

Her lips are soft and she's frozen. He pulls back after an instant—most people wouldn't even call it a kiss.

"What was that for?" she asks, and she sounds kind of lost.

He thinks, _You looked lonely_, but he says, "You're very pretty."

She laughs. "I think you're drunk."

Her fingers are still cold beneath his hand. He would like her skin to feel warm against his.

"Aren't you?" he asks and he knows she is because this time he really kisses her and she doesn't pull away. Her tongue traces invisible images against his and somehow his hand loses hers and finds her waist, pulling her toward him while their mouths get to know each other better than they've ever known one another at all.

They're finished speaking. She presses against him and his hands run urgently down her back, feeling the jut of her shoulder-blades over the satiny edge of her dress. His fingers stop at the zipper and she pulls away, glancing at the ocean and then at the Cottage.

She still doesn't say anything, though. He looks up at her for a moment and then he stands and takes her hand, his wand gripped tight in his other. "Hold on," he says, and it's stupid because they're both drunk but he's feeling like this is necessary or something.

His bedroom has boxer shorts piled in the corner and his blankets are on the floor and his sheets are in the wardrobe and his books are on the bed and his pillows are by the door and he knows that if he brings her there he'll lose her to the distraction borne of drunkenness, the very same drunkenness that is pulling them toward each other like they're each other's oxygen. She'll mock his mess and dress herself in his sheets and jump on his unmade bed.

But there's a tartan blanket on the roof of his building and stars are distant and impartial, so he takes her there. They land on the roof tiles and she stumbles but his hand is at her waist again and neither of them falls until they reach the blanket and then they're on the ground because they want to be.

Alcohol clouds it all—the fumbling of fingertips and the pattern of breaths and the rhythm of movements. It feels hazy and maybe that is all right.

Their legs are tangled; when they roll away from each other to lie on their backs Lily's left foot still presses against Teddy's left leg and he's glad that she hasn't separated herself from him entirely. He thinks that now might be the time to say something but his brain still feels jumbled and it may have more to do with her than the alcohol.

"Take girls here often?" she asks and he snorts.

"Hardly."

"What's with the blanket, then?"

He shrugs, his shoulders pressing back into the roof. "I come up here a lot. It's a good place to think."

She sits up and he can count the bumps of her spine. "We should really get back."

"Lily?" He can see the haze of city lights over the edge of the roof and the dim glimmer of starlight above them and his voice sounds very small and very young in all of it but he still feels very old. "Are you okay?"

She smiles at him over her shoulder. "Of course I am." She reaches for her dress and he sits up slowly, finding the pieces of his tuxedo spread around them.

"Are you going to Romania this summer?" he asks as he buttons his shirt.

"Yeah. The day after school lets out, in about a month." She sighs. "It's my last summer with Charlie." Teddy doesn't respond and she glances at him. "Why?"

"I just thought, if you were going to be in the UK, that we could see each other sometimes."

She shakes her head. "This is better as it is."

"What is it?"

She reaches over and tugs his wand from his pocket, handing it to him as she says, "Over."

He takes them back to Shell Cottage and the lights are still on and the music is still playing. The moon swims on the ocean and the empty Firewhiskey bottle leans against the empty rock.

He looks down at her. "You're not angry?" he asks, just to be sure.

"Stop worrying. I'm fine." And she is, he thinks, as she snatches her flip-flops from the ground by the rock and leaves him standing there. She is gone inside Shell Cottage and he doesn't think he'll ever have her the way he just did again.

**A/N:** I appreciate reviews!


	2. summer

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

summer

Charlie and Lily don't recognise the owl that flies through the open kitchen window at the beginning of July. Lily pauses in buttering her toast and Charlie hesitates before snatching his frying pan from the hob, so the bacon is a little crispier than usual.

The bird lands on the back of Charlie's empty chair, and directs its yellow gaze across the table at Lily. There's a letter attached to its leg, but neither Lily nor Charlie moves to take it. They often receive letters, of course, but never from unfamiliar owls.

"You expecting something?" Lily asks, although it's clear that her uncle is just as unsure of this owl as she is.

He sets the skillet by the sink and approaches the bird, holding out a bit of bacon as a peace offering. It snatches the meat from his fingertips with a subdued hoot and Charlie retrieves the letter.

He blinks in surprise and hands it to Lily. "Says it's for you. Maybe one of your friends got a new owl?"

Lily looks at her name, scrawled on the front in a hurried black scribble. "I don't know the handwriting." She slits the envelope and tugs out the letter, only glancing at the signature before folding it back up and stuffing it in her pocket.

"What is it?" Charlie asks, because Lily's face is suddenly tense and her right hand is caught on her braid, tugging at her red hair the way she only does when she's upset.

She doesn't answer him. "I've got to go take care of this. I'll meet you at feeding time, all right?"

He hesitates, wondering whether he should offer to help her, and she's already out the door by the time he replies, "Okay."

Lily makes it to the shed beside Charlie's stone cottage. She flips over an old rusted feed pail and sits on it, casting a _Lumos_ charm as she moves. Teddy's letter is nearly illegible, but after six summers spent with Charlie and the boys on the reserve she is no stranger to messy handwriting.

Her hands shake as she holds her wand over the page, making the words seem to jump in the faltering light.

_Dear Lily,_

_I've tried to write this letter so many times over the last two months, but I haven't been able to find the right way to tell you how sorry I am for what happened on the night of Vic and Graham's wedding._

Why he can't he just come out and say it, she wonders. Why couldn't he just write: "Sorry for having sex with you" and be done with it?

_Merlin, I must have used a forest's worth of paper and enough ink to fill the Channel just trying to apologise to you. I've come to the conclusion that nothing will express that adequately, so please just understand that _I am sorry_._

Lily rolls her eyes. Men are always so over-dramatic when it comes to guilt.

_I don't know what I was thinking. I never should have come on to you like that. I'm your god-brother and I'm eleven years older than you and everything about what I did is deplorable._

Why is it, Lily wonders, as she flips the page to see that Teddy had filled that side, as well, that boys always blame themselves when it comes to sex? Like she hadn't been there that night. Like she hadn't kissed him back, let him take her to his flat. She'd supplied the alcohol, so it's almost like she got him drunk. It is almost like it is all her fault.

Boys, she decides, are stupid. She becomes more secure in this conviction as she keeps reading.

_I also wanted to write to you to tell you that I interviewed for a position teaching at Hogwarts. I didn't tell you that night because I didn't expect to get it, but Professor Adair has offered me the job of Defence Professor. (Yes, I know, following in my father's footsteps. Feel free to mock me.)_

_I haven't accepted the position yet. I want to make sure that it won't be weird for you, having to treat me as your professor. (Mostly because of what happened between us, but I would have written anyway, seeing as how you're my god-sister and it could have been uncomfortable for you even if what happened hadn't happened.)_

_I promise, if you say that it is all right for me to take the position, I will never treat you any differently than I treat the other students._

_Thank you, Lily.  
>Ted<em>

She feels something burning in her stomach and she swallows, hoping to block the emotion before it rises and settles hot behind her eyes.

Of course she can't tell him not to take the job, and she wouldn't want to, but it's difficult to imagine walking into NEWT level Defence and seeing him at the front of the room.

She closes her eyes for a moment and when she opens them Teddy's owl is hovering outside the shed's dusty window, bobbing in and out of sight as it flaps its wings.

She sighs and opens the door so the bird can fly inside. "He wants a response now, is that it?" she asks the owl, and he lands on her shoulder, his talons catching at the cotton of her tee-shirt.

She doesn't have any parchment, so she takes the envelope from her pocket and scribbles above her name:

_Teddy –  
><em>_I was there too, you know. Stop apologising. It's fine.  
><em>_Of course you can take the job; you'll be brilliant at it.  
><em>_Thanks for checking.  
><em>—_Lily_

She folds the envelope in half and writes his name on the back before giving it to the bird and petting him lightly on his feathered head.

"Make sure he knows he's being ridiculous, okay?"

The owl takes off and flies through the still open door. Lily sits for a moment longer, then mutters, "_Nox_", sticks her wand in her pocket, and leaves the shed just as Charlie passes on the path toward the dragon paddocks.

He waves when he sees her. "All taken care of?" he asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, all set. Are we starting with the orphans today?"

Charlie nods. "Probably best."

They only have two dragons in the infirmary, a large paddock attached to an open stone structure. They're young, less than a year old, and their mothers died before they were fully weaned. Lily, Charlie, and a few others feed them small deer daily, usually before dawn. According to their vitals and progress breathing fire and flying, Charlie says they'll be ready to go free on the Reserve in two months. Lily is less optimistic.

Three men are already standing by the feed shed when they arrive, and Lily forces a smile as Adam breaks away from the others and comes to meet them.

"Morning." He takes her hand and leans down to brush a kiss against her cheek.

"Hey," she replies. "You lot done the feeding already?"

"And spare you the pleasure of doing it yourself? Would we be so cruel?"

"Sometimes I wonder," Lily mutters, and Adam chuckles and squeezes her hand, although he's not entirely sure what she means.

Charlie follows behind them and the other two men—Ivan and Cole—nod sleepily in hello. Lily tugs her wand out and begins to undo the locks on the deer pen.

"Won't it be nice when we don't need to wake up early to feed these monsters?" Cole asks.

Ivan sighs. "Like there won't be another dragon or five in the infirmary as soon as we let these ones go."

Lily opens the door and casts a charm over the two deer. "I don't know what you lot are complaining about," she levitates the deer from the shed and toward the paddock, "seeing as how I'm the one who always feeds the babies."

"Only when you're here on holiday," Ivan reminds her. "And besides, we're still here for moral support, aren't we?"

"But when you come here full time, at the end of this year," Cole begins, letting the suggestion hang in the air.

Lily doesn't respond—she has the deer at the fence and concentrates on sending them over it, far enough into the grassy field that they won't immediately run for freedom when they touch the ground, giving the dragons the opportunity to catch them.

After a few seconds of silence, Adam says, "When you're here full time, none of us will have to get up other than you." He's smiling, Lily can tell without looking at him.

"Yeah, and I bet that's the only reason you're happy she's applying for a position here after she leaves school," Cole teases.

"It better be," Charlie growls. "That's my niece you're talking about."

He's been quiet this morning, Lily thinks, as the dragons come barrelling from opposite sides of the paddock, sending the deer running in frenzied circles as they catch the scent of heat on the air and feel the quake to the ground. Usually Charlie's joking with the others. Of course, usually _she's_ joking with the others.

"Hey." Adam puts his hand on her shoulder as the Norwegian Ridgeback reaches the first deer and digs its claws into the furred side. "Are you okay?"

She turns and smiles at him. "Of course. Just tired." She links her fingers with his. "Are we checking the borders today?"

He glances at the others, who are all beginning to walk toward the research centre.

"Guess so," he tells her. "Are you sure you're all right? You've been quiet lately."

She shrugs. "Yeah, I'm fine." But she wonders what he means by "lately". Does he mean since this morning, when she barely said three words, or since the beginning of the summer, when she fell out of Charlie's fireplace into his arms and only smiled after he'd let go of her? Maybe he's going as far back as Christmas holidays, as New Year's Eve, when he found her sitting alone in her bedroom at midnight, staring out her window at the dark expanse of pine forest, when he got his New Year's kiss only after the clock had stopped chiming and everyone else had gone home. He can't be thinking of last summer, she knows, because last summer she wanted to be his dreams made real. And it's laughable to think that "lately" might extend to two summers ago.

Two summers ago, she had been fifteen and already a veteran on the Reserve. Adam had been nineteen and new. She knew her way around the dragons and was everyone's favourite. There was also the bit about her being Harry Potter's daughter, and so Adam had hated her. And that had made Lily love him.

She'd liked his long black hair—back then he had worn it to his chin, now it hangs crooked around his ears—and his grey eyes had always sparked with delicious indignation when he looked at her. There had also been his hands—big and long-fingered and the one time she saw him holding one of the newly hatched dragons while Ivan extracted a blood sample her heart had stopped at the way his fingers looked against the creature's green scales.

"Do you remember when you stopped hating me?" she asks him now because two years ago is safer than six or three months ago, safer than this moment.

He tilts his head. "Did I stop hating you? Can't seem to recall, pretty sure I still do."

She elbows him. If he knew about her and Teddy he wouldn't be joking. "Seriously, though, I'm trying to sort it out."

"When did I stop hating you?" he repeats. "Well, it was definitely after the first time I kissed you. I kissed you to shut you up because you kept going on about that dragon with the broken wing, remember, and I was already stressed about it enough without you bringing it up every two seconds."

She laughs. "Oh, I'd forgotten about that. Worst kiss I've ever had, by the way."

"Well, I hated you." They're in the forest now; checking the protective charms around the parameter would be a lot faster if they Apparated, but Adam has always liked to take the long way, and Lily's never minded spending more time in the forest. Now, though, she's got a knot of guilt somewhere below her diaphragm that keeps pressing harder and harder until she can barely breathe.

"I think," Adam says, "I stopped hating you toward the middle of my first summer, when the dragon was healed enough to fly and you looked so happy—Merlin, I hadn't ever seen a smile as wide as yours. That's when I decided I didn't hate you."

Lily forces her guilt away and smiles at him. "Glad it wasn't when I made an arse of myself falling into the river and you had to jump in to save me."

"No, that was when I decided I loved you."

She manages not to snatch her hand from his. She wishes he wouldn't talk about love because she's not sure what that means anymore. She thinks she might have loved him, that summer two years ago and two Christmases ago and last year. She hopes she loved him then, because otherwise her heart did a damn good job of lying to her.

But now? How can she love him now, when her memory is still—months later and fogged by Firewhiskey—full of another man's hands and lips and skin?

Adam doesn't question her silence. "Remember how we were terrified to tell Charlie about us?"

"And then it turned out he already knew because Ivan walked in on us snogging and ran out and told on us right away, the prat."

"And Charlie was just waiting for us to tell him to see how long it took."

"Merlin, that feels like forever ago." Two years, Lily reflects, is not a long time while you're in it, but afterwards it seems interminable.

"A good sort of forever, though?" The doubt is slight, but it's there.

Lily squeezes his hand. "Yeah," she lies. "Yeah, the good sort."

:::

She tries to make leaving hurt more. She wants to miss Adam and Romania and the dragons, and so she sits on her bed the day before she's supposed to leave and remembers the last few years. She looks at her bookshelves, half full because she's always come back. She looks at the open wardrobe, still holding a few singed jumpers and ratty trousers and dragon-hide boots. She picks at the maroon knitted blanket that covers her bed—a gift from Uncle Ron—and glances at the framed photograph on the bedside table, where Albus and James are both trying to get her in a headlock and their parents have their heads thrown back in laughter.

There's a letter on her desk. Teddy sent it to her nearly two months ago, but she hasn't responded. It doesn't need a reply; he'd just written "Thank you" on a scrap of paper. But Lily keeps it because those two words make her think she might not be the worst person ever.

Lily glances at her watch: ten to midnight. She was supposed to meet Adam at eleven thirty. She sighs and slips from her bed, tugs her jumper down over her jean shorts and slides her feet into ankle boots even though they're horrible and don't match her outfit at all. She doesn't bother being quiet as she skips every other step down the stairs; Charlie hasn't questioned her about going out late since she was twelve.

Adam doesn't answer when she knocks at the door to his cottage, and neither does Liam, the only other man under thirty employed on the reserve. She isn't surprised. Lily hops the low stone wall that encircles what would be a garden if either of the boys were agriculturally inclined and finds Adam sitting in the middle of the weeds with glowing candles and a picnic basket. No blanket, because he knows she likes the feeling of the earth beneath her.

"I was afraid you'd fallen asleep," he tells her.

"And miss our annual picnic? Never." She hates herself but she can't tell him, not now.

Lily sits beside him. He hands her a croissant and they don't speak for what feels like a year, but may have been only seconds, minutes at the most.

Finally he says, "I can't believe summer's over again. I wish you were staying."

"Last year, though," she points out. He nods, even though what she's said means nothing and promises him even less.

"And then you're applying to work here," he hesitates, "right?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" But it all feels wrong.

Adam looks at her. "I love you, Lil. You know that, don't you?"

He wants her to tell him she loves him too. He wants a lot. Maybe too much. She sighs and it could be a happy sound—he can't see the guilt in her eyes. "Yeah, I know that." Before he can protest and ask leading questions and act hurt she leans forward and kisses him. She hopes he reads what he wants to into her touch, because she cannot tell him what he wants to hear. And she cannot tell him that she doesn't love him, either. She has tried, the words don't come. So she lets her body lie for her.

**A/N:** Um, so this turned into a 20,000 word monstrosity. You'll notice that the first two chapters are each only about 2500 words. I might split up the next few into smaller sections, but I'll probably keep them divided as they are (meaning that the next two chapters will be about 8000 words, which is poor planning on my part but probably better for the overall flow).

Thank you for reading, and I greatly appreciate reviews!


	3. fall

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_.

fall

At first Teddy refuses to look at the Slytherin table. When they all come into the Great Hall he turns his attention to Professor Laughman, the Potions Master who had been a few years ahead of him at Hogwarts, on his left, or to Professor Longbottom on his right.

But he can't avoid seeing Lily in his class. She comes in looking just like every other Slytherin except she's got these grey-blue-green eyes that hold him and he knows what her hands feel like and he's seen the scars from dragon burns down her right ribcage. So she doesn't actually look like any other Slytherin, not at all, not to him.

He has NEWT Defence on his second day, and Laughman pulls him aside before he enters his classroom. She puts one hand on his shoulder and murmurs, "I know you're friends with the Potter family. I just want to warn you that Lily can be a bit of a handful, especially when she's with her friends. And I think they all made it into your class."

"Thanks for the warning," Teddy says, even though really he's wondering whether she thinks he can't handle a bunch of show-off teenagers. (Although Merlin knows he can't handle Lily when she's on her own, but that is different.)

He's at the front of the room as it begins to fill and he recognises some of the students. He knows Hugo, of course, and he's met Ris Parkinson—whose hair is green today but will be violet next week—and he's pretty sure that Lily's brought that boy with the black hair and the blacker eyes home once before—Cormac Zabini, or something, he thinks.

Lily comes in last and she sits beside Cormac (if that's his name) and Teddy tells himself he is in no way jealous.

He steps forward after she's seated and introduces himself before asking the students to come to the front of the class, tell him their names, and perform a Defence spell.

Shields shimmer in their various forms, Ris disarms Teddy, Hugo disintegrates his desk, and Fiona Thomas casts a Distraction Charm that leaves their ears ringing for minutes after she returns to her seat.

Then Lily stands in front of him, and he doesn't see anything else there—just another student. She tells him, her voice free of irony, "I'm Lily Potter," and either she's a very good actress or she's been Obliviated. She raises her wand, her eyes burn fierce for a moment and she mutters, "_expecto patronum_", sending a silvery dragon from her wand into the centre aisle of the classroom.

It dissipates quickly and Teddy just manages to sound unsurprised as he says, "Very good. Have you ever performed that spell in front of a dementor?"

"No," she responds.

He nods. "How many of you have produced a Patronus?" The Slytherins raise their hands, as does Hugo. "Excellent," he says, although he's shocked that anyone has. "We'll be working on those this year, but they are not scheduled until next term." He glances at Lily. "You may take a seat, Miss Potter." She does without saying anything else.

In fact, neither she nor her friends ever speak in his class unless he calls on them. Two weeks into the term, Laughman and Norcott corner him in the staff room and ask whether any of the Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs have shown up with elephant ears of if they've run from his room in tears. He laughs and the other two professors exchange surprised looks.

"I'll take that as a no, then," Norcott says.

"Elephant ears, though?" Teddy asks. "Surely that's never happened."

"You would be surprised at what Miss Potter and her friends are capable of," Laughman informs him.

From the other side of the staff room Neville Longbottom interjects, "They're only really awful if they don't respect you. Just keep your lessons interesting, Lupin, and you'll be fine."

Laughman glares at him, her face livid. "Excuse me? Are you saying my lessons are boring, Longbottom?"

Neville chuckles as Teddy shifts, uncomfortable. "Not to me, I'm sure, Sarah. I've always been miserable at Potions. But for students like Lily and Ris, well..."

"What's different about them?"

"They're just," Neville hesitates, "impatient with school. They like a fast pace. I," he tells her, "have had innumerable issues with them. Teddy's the only one I know who hasn't had any problems with them at all."

Teddy flushes. He wonders if Lily's reluctance to piss him off has anything at all to do with respect or if it's all to do with what happened between them. He doesn't know whether to be grateful to her or to be angry. Wasn't she supposed to treat him just like any other professor?

He doesn't intend to ask her about it, or even to run into her alone, and so he almost turns around when he comes into the Owlery one evening in late September to find Lily on the floor, her owl Athena perched on her shoulder. She's twisting an envelope in her hands.

Lily sees him hesitating in the doorway and says, "Hey." She doesn't even sound self-conscious.

"Hi," he responds. He takes the final step in the room and they're isolated from the world, cocooned in the soft rustling of feathers and the delicate hoot of bird conversations.

Lily's still holding her letter. While he clucks his tongue for Neptune to come floating from somewhere far off in the owlery, she twists the paper even tighter between her fingers. He's not sure whether she wants a conversation but he asks, "You sending that? Or did you just get it?"

She blinks. "Sending it," and she finally holds out her wrist so that Athena can hop from her shoulder. Lily attaches the letter to her owl's leg and comes to stand beside Teddy. They watch as Athena and Neptune drift off into the inky sky together, until Athena veers east and Neptune continues south.

Teddy and Lily stand in silence for a few moments, long after both of their birds have disappeared and the moon's glow fills the grounds beneath them with silky quivering light. Their hands are close, too close, and Lily impulsively catches at his with hers. He stiffens.

"Lily?" he says. He means for his tone to sound like a warning, but instead it's questioning.

"You know, you apologised, but I never did."

He can barely think, but he manages to ask, "Are you going to?"

They're still holding hands and if anyone catches them he'll be out on his arse before the stars even come out. And Harry'll kill him before the sun rises.

She laughs. "Of course not. I don't regret having sex with you."

"You don't?"

"No."

He disentangles their fingers. "How can you not?"

"It's easy," she steps close to him. She's crowding him. He can smell the sweetness of her perfume, can see the mark on her nose from a bout with chicken pox when she was younger, can read nothing in her eyes, and then he's tasting her again—coffee and mint—and there doesn't seem to be any separation between seeing her and touching her and the boundaries are nonexistent or at least insignificant.

And then they are staring at him, blaring bright behind his eyelids, bursting out of all of his feelings because isn't it forbidden to feel this much? And then he remembers: for them, for Lily and him, it is three thousand shades of forbidden, thirty thousand, maybe.

He breaks away. "Lily." Her name chokes from his throat, a guttural curling of his tongue.

"Look," she says. And then she doesn't say anything else, doesn't offer any explanation, and so he does. He looks. She is the same girl he saw in the corner at Victoire's wedding; the same one who poured liquid fire down his throat and threaded it through his veins; she is the girl who eclipsed London's mirage of city lights; the one who visited his rooftop and turned his blanket lonely; the one who left him and ignored him and cast a fierce dragon Patronus in his classroom. Her red hair reminds him of summer as a child and her red lips remind of the blur of alcohol and her fingers, twisting each other nervously, remind him of just a few moments ago and the smell of owl shit and the smell of her (and she smells nothing like owl shit) and why isn't this easy? He looks and she looks and they do not speak for a long time.

And then she says, still soft, "See?" Like she's laid out all the answers and he's just read them, understood them. But all he sees are more questions.

Questions like: "How would it work? It couldn't work."

Lily shrugs. "We keep it a secret," like that's obvious. And then, "I know someone else who's done it. No one ever knew, aside from me. And they never got caught."

He doesn't ask who. She won't tell him, if she's even telling the truth.

She's close again and this time he keeps his eyes open and they let the kiss end naturally, when they both pull away slowly, breathing a little heavily in the gentle noise of the birds and Lily looks at him and for a moment he wishes he hadn't taken the job because then it wouldn't be simple but Merlin knows it would be simpler.

"I think it's worth the risk," is all she says.

Now he's feeling reckless and he'd be an idiot to disagree so he nods, says, "Yeah," and could it be this easy?

She pulls away from him. "I told Ris I'd meet her to go over Potions, although I'm rather rubbish and she'd be better off with Hugo but he's in detention with Cockman so really we're fucked," and it occurs to Teddy that she's babbling and nervous and maybe she has little shivers of excitement sparking in her veins, too.

"All right. Good luck." She's looking at him like he might be taking it all back, so he adds, "See you later."

"Yeah." She leaves him with the birds.

He doesn't call on her in class for the next week. But when he asks, "What are the three unforgiveable curses?" she's the only one to raise her hand.

He nods to her, acutely aware that the last time he spoke to her he still had the feel of her body on his. She keeps her gaze direct and her voice steady; he'd like to believe that everything is normal. He is just a teacher asking a student to expand on the effects of the three forbidden curses and that's all. That's it, except that he's wondering whether it hurts her to talk about the curses, whether she resents him for asking the question. But it's his past, too. She must remember—he cuts that thought short because as her teacher, her emotions are not his concern. His concern is: "And which curse would you believe has the strongest ethical argument against it?"

She isn't expecting that and after a few seconds silence Ris jumps in, "The Imperius Curse."

"Anyone agree with Miss Parkinson?" Most of the class raise their hands, but not Lily, and not Hugo.

"Mr. Weasley?" Teddy prompts.

"_Imperio_ can be countered," Hugo replies, "if you're strong enough, if you're trained. And pain's not _that _bad. You don't stand a chance against the killing curse." He hesitates and then adds awkwardly, since his uncle has always been just his uncle. "Unless you're Harry Potter, obviously."

Lily cuts in, "That's rubbish. The question is rubbish," she tells Teddy. "Theoretical questions always are. They're all ethically wrong, that's why they're _forbidden_. You should be training us how to fight the Imperius Curse and how to dodge _Avada_ _Kedavra_ and how to ignore pain. That's all that really matters."

"Not exactly." Lily would talk like this to any of her teachers, he's confident. No one seems overly surprised, anyway. "You also need to know what the person casting the spell is thinking. If someone—a dark wizard or not—will only cast one or two of the three, then you know something about them already, you can find their weaknesses."

"No one would only cast one or two, though," Lily argues. "You cast one, you cast them all."

"I know of several people who've cast one without casting the others." She's heard her father's stories, and those of his co-workers in DMLE, of the occasional use of the Cruciatus Curse and she flushes.

"Maybe," she cedes, and he nods.

"So, given that, which do you consider the least ethical?" Maybe he wouldn't push any of his other students this way but none of his other students would challenge him like that, either.

"_Imperio_."

They spend the rest of class dodging harmless lines of sparks as a substitute for the deadlier curses, and if Lily's sprays occasionally go too near Teddy's desk, he's prepared to tap it down to teenage mood-swings.

She comes to his quarters that night, for the first time. If he hadn't had an intimate acquaintance with Harry's (and his father's) old map he would have asked her how she found him, but he knows. He passed the map to James who would have given it to Albus, and Lily probably stole it from him before he'd even left Hogwarts.

Teddy steps aside and she passes him into his living room. Without even saying hello, she asks, "Which do you think is the least ethical?"

"Cruciatus," he replies, leading her into the kitchen and opening a cupboard to find a bottle of wine and two glasses. She takes her glass from him and sips at the drink without saying anything.

When he doesn't elaborate she sighs. "How the fuck is pain less ethical than death? Or loss of control?"

"Like Hugo said, you can fight _imperio_. He had it wrong, though. You can't train yourself not to feel pain—not the type of pain that curse causes."

"And death?" she prompts.

"That's an end. _Crucio_ can go on and on, until your veins are shredded from the agony of it."

"Have you ever felt it?"

Teddy sips from his wine. "Once in seventh year Graham and I cast _crucio_ and _imperio_ on each other, to see what they felt like. It didn't work, of course—we'd forgotten that we needed to hate each other, to really mean it, in order to use those curses."

"So you never have?"

Teddy shakes his head. "No. I've heard about the pain from your father, of course. Doesn't exactly sound ideal."

Lily laughs. "No."

Teddy's tired of talking about curses. "How'd your Potions work go the other day?"

"All right, but only because we convinced Hugo to help us after he got back from detention. Which was especially nice of him since we were the ones who landed him there."

"What did you lot _do_ to poor Sarah?"

"Oh, don't go feeling bad for Cockman, Ted. She's a bitch. She's hated us for years."

"From what I've heard, you haven't exactly treated her well."

"She deserves everything we've given her." And then Lily realises what he's said. "She's complained about me?"

"You and Ris and Hugo," Teddy tells her. "Mostly to warn me about you. Like I don't already know you're trouble."

Lily laughs. "Oh, I hope you told her that."

"Of course not. I told her you'd been a perfect angel. Which was true, until today."

"What, just because we're secretly sleeping together, I'm not supposed to challenge you?"

That question, Merlin. "Secretly sleeping together," Teddy repeats, and Lily flushes.

"Aren't we?" she manages, although her skin is pink with embarrassment or fear of rejection or something.

"Well, yeah." He sets his empty wine glass in the sink and takes hers. "It's just weird to hear you say it like that. Makes it sound base."

"Want romance?" She takes a step closer to him and whispers, "Shall we call this our illicit affair? Maybe we can send codes to each other at breakfast. Hold up two fingers if I should come over that night and one," she raises her middle finger, "if you want to meet in the deepest, darkest, slimiest corner of the dungeon during lunch hour."

He grins. "Hey now, a little respect, Miss Potter."

"Show me why I should respect you." Her voice is a challenge, but in the best possible way.

He reaches out and pulls her toward him, and when her arms go around his neck he picks her up and carries her from the kitchen into the bedroom and later, before she slips back to Slytherin, she whispers, "All right, Professor Lupin, I respect you."

And it's strange how the forbidden is so appealing.

:::

"Ris asked where I've been lately the other day."

Lily's standing in his kitchen, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. She's got two eggs on the stove—about all she knows how to cook—and he's sitting at his table, papers from the fourth years piled in front of him (he never marks the NEWT papers when she's around—he does have some sort of a conscience).

He tries not to let her see that he's nervous. "And what did you say?"

"I told her that she's always in Ravenclaw with Hugo so she wouldn't notice if I flew off to Romania every weekend." Lily flips the eggs and breaks the yolks. "Shit."

"And what'd she say?"

"She said that we had not been acting like best friends lately and that we should start hanging out again before the whole school decides that we've had a falling out. I'm going to Hogsmeade with her tonight."

"Good," he tamps down that obnoxious voice that reminds him that it is not a Hogsmeade weekend and leaving school is forbidden for even the seventh years. After all, what isn't forbidden?

"And then tomorrow Hugo's dragging us to this career lecture the Ravenclaws have organised and then Monday I've got detention with Cockman and Tuesday Ris wants us all to go to London and Wednesday I have a Floo date with Charlie and some others from the Reserve so I won't be by again until Thursday."

"London?" Teddy asks.

"Yeah, there's a concert—some Muggle band Ris saw in Rome two summers ago. They're touring in the States starting next month and Ris wants to see them once more before they go."

"But is that...is it safe?" He doesn't mind sounding old. He's allowed to care.

"Stop worrying." She sets a plate of semi-burnt toast on the table, scooting the jam from the opposite end with her free hand. "We've done this before."

"Oh, good. Glad to hear you've been breaking rules before me."

"You must've realised that by now. It's what I do best."

"Better than cooking anyway." He ducks the napkin she tosses at him. "Well, I'll miss you."

"Cheers." She bolts her toast and orange juice and drops a kiss on his hair before grabbing her bag from the counter. "I'm off. Hugo's asked for help in Defence. Don't suppose you could just give him high marks and save me the effort?"

"Not if he doesn't earn them. I'll see you in class."

"Slave driver," she mutters as she swings the invisibility cloak over her shoulders and shuts the door behind her. His hair turns a melancholy blue as he returns to the fourth year exams. He thinks he should probably go see Vic and Graham, but he's afraid they'll see too much in his expression, read too much into his smile.

He goes on Sunday anyway; he cannot be alone anymore. They don't seem to notice anything about him; they're still too consumed with newly married life, in the way their matching coffee cups look on the kitchen counter and the agreeable duvet in their bedroom and the magic markered name on the label beside the buzzer for flat 7 of their London building. Teddy goes home feeling relieved that his life doesn't revolve around one other person, but then he finds himself counting down the days, hours, minutes until Thursday night and he wonders.

She sheds the invisibility cloak in his living area Thursday and she's burning with excitement.

"London was brilliant. I always forget how much I love it there, when I'm out here, where it's all pretty and sleepy. But Merlin, it was wonderful."

"And the band?" She's fallen to Teddy's lap on the couch and his fingers wind through her hair, brush across her cheeks and down over her shoulders.

"All right. Ris has an odd taste in music, but yeah, they were all right." She shakes her head and his hands fall to rest on her waist. "But London, Ted. I don't know how you gave up living there. Didn't you love it?"

"It was..." He thinks back to his flat, to his thankless job at the Ministry and the nights in pubs and the nameless girls and the empty beer bottles in the recycling bin every Monday. "It turned sort of lonely," he confesses. "After a while, after my mates moved on. I needed a change."

"Do you like teaching any better?" It's funny she's never asked him that before—no one has.

"It has its perks," he jokes, pressing a light kiss to her lips.

"But really," she says when he pulls back a little. "Seriously. Do you like it better?"

"Yeah," he promises, "a lot."

"Good." And she kisses him back this time.

The next morning he wakes her before dawn and whispers, "Will you come with me?"

"Where?" she yawns, curling deeper beneath the covers.

"Trust me." He's dressed and he hands her her clothes, the ones she keeps folded in a box beneath his bed.

She rolls out of bed whining, but by the time she's got the invisibility cloak on so only her head is hanging in his kitchen, her eyes are bright with curiosity. She flips the hood up and they leave his quarters together, Lily unseeable and mostly silent beside him. The cloak is wasted, though; they don't meet anyone on their way to the main doors.

He leads her across the grounds and they pass the gamekeeper's hut and head into the Forest. When the trees have completely hidden the castle from view he reaches out and fumbles in the air a moment before feeling the liquid cloth of the cloak beneath his hand and tugging it from her shoulders. She appears beside him, looking confused.

They're by a small creek, and there's an ancient stone wall winding its way alongside it, and Teddy perches on the wall and pats the space beside him.

"Here." He hands her a carafe of coffee and a croissant.

She takes them, but she's looking at him like he's crazy.

"I feel bad we can only see each other in my room." He tears the corner from his own croissant and waves it around them, at the trees and the river and the leafy sky above them. "This is sort of a date, I guess."

Her smile is slow to come—a shadow of fear precedes it—but when it arrives it's blinding and he thinks she's happy, just like he is.

:::

Teddy has always liked November. He knows a lot of people don't—they find the month dreary and uncomfortable. But he loves it. Lily, however, is apparently of the second group. She has become increasingly grumpy as the days pass, and by the end of the month anything he says may set her off.

It's late in the night, or early in the morning—one or two, maybe three. She hasn't knocked at his door before midnight in weeks, and she comes in cold tonight, her cheeks bright and her hair in damp tangles from the cold November rain. She's only wearing a ratty jumper and jeans, and she's soaked.

He'd like to ask her what's wrong, but her eyes tell him if he says anything he'll be met with caustic silence. He goes to heat the water for tea, but her hand catches at his wrist before he reaches the kitchen, her fingers icy and her nails biting.

When he turns back to her she doesn't give him a breath to question her, she propels herself against his body and clings, her hands making fists in his shirt, her face pressing cold against the material over his collarbone.

"Lily," he begins.

"Shhh," she begs. "Please, can we just —?" and she stands on tiptoe to kiss him.

It has never felt like this before—so rushed. For the first time he feels like this thing might actually be wrong. Not just misguided, frowned upon, risky. Tonight her body on his feels really and truly wrong. Dirty.

She rolls away from him afterwards, her feet still cold as they slip from where they've tangled with his legs. She sits up and gathers the sheets around her, facing the wall, away from him. He doesn't move, studies the freckles on her back. They're a sort of map—scattered islands on the ocean of Lily—and he's named them all, although he's never told her, thinking that she might find it creepy rather than endearing.

Now wouldn't be the time anyway. She is still and stiff and if he is feeling used then she might be feeling used too.

She breaks the silence and turns it all to shit.

"I have a boyfriend in Romania."

The words make no sense. He says nothing.

She's still got her back to him when she elaborates, "We started dating three summers ago. I was still with him when I slept with you at Vic's wedding. We've never fought."

He can't imagine this, can't picture her with anyone but him, can't see her as anything but innocent on the rooftop of his flat, as more conniving than love struck in the Owlery.

His shock dulls the anger. "So," he draws the word out. It means nothing but he's hoping she'll read something into it.

"You don't care?" She turns to face him and her skin is pale and her eyes glow—she's hopeful. She's an idiot.

He stands and starts pacing beside his bed, his hands contracting into fists and then releasing, repetitive as his path. "Fuck. _Fuck. _How the hell could you be so selfish?"

She's drawing into herself again, securing the sheet around her body, her eyelids hovering over her eyes, concealing herself from him. But she's still fighting. "How was I selfish?"

"How were you not?" If his walls weren't stone he'd have turned them to sand by now. "You never even told me—never even implied—that there was ever anyone else. And now you say you've had a boyfriend for three years! Three years, Lily. How could you do that? How could you do that to yourself and to him and how the fuck could you do that to me?"

She's found her pants and trousers by the door, and she's getting dressed. The thought of her disappearing from his bed isn't lessening the pain. "What _have_ I done to you? We were just having fun, Teddy."

"Having fun? Nothing more, Lily? There is—was—nothing else for you? You had me risk my career—risk everything—just for sex?"

"Didn't I make it clear?" She's buttoning her shirt and it occurs to him that this might be the last time he sees her like this. He hates that he's already missing her.

"You made me fall in love with you." He's not sure where the words have come from; probably somewhere in the deepest corners of his heart, shoved up and out of his mouth with his rapid pulse. He knows he shouldn't have said them. Her wide eyes, the shocked round space between her lips, the way her hands have clutched at the front of her shirt—all of that tells him he shouldn't have spoken. And he knows, too, because his stomach has twisted in on itself.

But she doesn't run away. She licks her lips and whispers, "I'm breaking up with him. I just couldn't keep it from you anymore." She inhales. "I can come by tomorrow, after. We can talk."

"No." Because she hasn't said it back, and because he wouldn't believe her if she did. "No. I'll see you in class, and only in class."

"Teddy," she begins, her voice higher than usual. "Please."

"Professor Lupin," he corrects. He moves to the door and opens it, gesturing her out into the living area. "I will see you in class, Miss Potter."

She looks at him like he's broken her heart, but he can't have, because he no longer believes she has one.

**A/N:** (I'm so productive when I actually write entire fics before I publish them.)  
>I appreciate reviews!<p> 


	4. winter, then fall

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter._

winter

Ris finds Lily in the library early on the second Saturday in December. She has books stacked all around her, but her head is down, her hands are spread flat on the desk. She looks rather pathetic and Ris almost feels bad for what she's about to say. Almost.

She places the letter on the table in front of Lily. Her friend doesn't lift her head. Ris coughs. Lily doesn't move.

"I got an interesting note this morning," Ris finally says.

Lily mumbles something. It may have been, "Fuck off."

"Sorry, can't hear you, darling. The table's in the way." Ris pulls out a chair and sits, bringing her knees up to her chin and tapping her short fingernail against the parchment. "This letter, though. It's rather interesting." Lily's face is still bonding with the tabletop. "Do you want to know who it's from?" Ris unfolds the letter and flattens it against the wood. "I'll take your silence as a: 'Yes, Ris, I'm dying of curiosity, Ris.'" Nothing. Somebody should probably start spiking Lily's drinks with happy potions; otherwise she might never move again.

"It's from Adam. You remember Adam?"

Lily sits up then. Her eyes are shadowed and her teeth have left marks on her lower lip. "What about Adam?" Her voice is dry.

"You broke up with him," Ris informs her, "four weeks ago."

"I did."

"That's like a month. A whole month, Lily, and you didn't even tell me or Hugo. We thought you and Adam were fine."

"I don't love him."

"Is that what you told him?" Ris waves the letter in the air. "Because in this he sounds pretty confused. He wanted me to find out what was going on. Please tell me, what is going on?"

"I don't love him," Lily repeats.

"Okay, okay, you don't love him. But why the secrecy?"

Lily shrugs. "I didn't think you needed to know. It's not like you even know Adam, really."

"But Lily, I know you. I want to know what's going on in your life."

"Sorry. I'll tell you next time I ditch somebody."

"Thank you." Ris folds the letter and slips it in her pocket. "I'm going to tell Adam that you've moved on and I'm sorry for his loss, but that he will find someone better in no time. He was also wondering," Ris hesitates. "Well...I'm wondering, too...are you planning on going back to the Reserve over Christmas?"

Lily stands and waves her wand, sending books flying back to their shelves. A second year Hufflepuff narrowly avoids getting hit in the face by a thick _The History of Defence and the Auror Department_.

"No, I don't think so," she tells Ris, once the desk and the floor are clear.

Ris stares after Lily as she swings her bag over her shoulder and disappears among the shelves. Ris thinks she may have gone insane somewhere in the last moment, maybe hallucinating Lily's reply, maybe even the letter in her pocket.

But no, the letter is still there, and Lily's answer—her unexpected answer—still rings harsh in Ris's ears.

"Wait!" Ris hurries after Lily, catching at her friend's hand just as Lily turns the corner outside the library. Lily's hand is cold and she jerks it away, shaking it as if Ris has infected her.

"What?" Lily's not annoyed, not really, but Ris can see little lines of worry between her eyebrows and she wonders how much she's missed in the last few weeks—months?

"You're done with dragons? Just like that?"

"Not 'just like that', but yeah, I think I am." When Ris stares at her Lily sighs. "Look, I've been going to the Reserve for years and I used to love it. But after last summer...and especially last Christmas...I don't know. Something felt wrong. Like I was bored with it." Lily laughs as Ris shakes her head. "I know, I know. Bored of fucking dragons. No one would believe me. But I am. And if I think of my future, of moving to Romania after we leave school and tending to dragons every single day for the rest of my life...I start feeling ill. At the thought of it, Ris. I can't do that to myself."

"But this started a year ago?" Ris bites her lip. "Why didn't you tell any of us?"

"Because I wasn't sure until this summer. And then after...how should I have told you? Like: 'Hey, guys, I have no idea what I want to do next year, but I know I don't want to move to Romania?' Would that have worked?" They're still in the corridor and it's mostly quiet around them, but Lily's voice has gotten louder and Ris glances down the side corridor. She sees Professor Lupin frozen there, and she grabs at Lily's wrist again.

"Come on." She tugs her friend down corridor away from Lupin and pushes her into an empty classroom before answering her probably hypothetical question. "Yes, that would have worked. Anything would have worked, if you had just told us."

"I haven't told anyone yet. I haven't even told Charlie, and I felt like he should be the first to know." She shrugs. "I should do that."

"Merlin." Ris shakes her head. "It's weird, to think that you're in the same boat as Hugo and me again. I mean," she hurries to explain, because Lily's looking mutinous, "like, you have no idea what you're doing in June, and neither do we."

"Ah, yes, the same exact boat." Lily laughs and nods toward the door. "Are you planning on cursing me or can we go back outside?"

"I just didn't want Lupin to give us detentions for making a scene in the corridors," Ris explains as she opens the door and waves Lily through. "We don't need him hating us."

"No," Lily says softly, "no, we don't."

:::

The week before the start of Christmas hols Lily, Ris, and Hugo arrive early to breakfast. They're supposed to be studying for a Defence exam, but they've decided to spend the day in Hogsmeade, and Ris and Hugo want to get out of the castle before everyone else is awake. They're sitting at the Slytherin table, and Ris and Hugo are arguing about their plans for Christmas—Ris wants Hugo to spend Christmas with her and her mum in Morocco, and Hugo is begging Ris to come to Lily's—and Ris finally explodes, "I cannot spend another holiday sleeping in the guest bedroom at Lil's when I could be sleeping with you!"

Lily snorts into her pumpkin juice and her raises her eyes to the professor's table. Teddy's the only one sitting there and he's looking at her. His eyes catch hers for a moment and she reads something there, lighter than the anger that has suffused them every time he looks at her in class or passes her in the corridor. His lips twitch into a half smile and she returns it tentatively. He may be forgiving her.

But then he turns his head and it occurs to Lily that he may actually be forgetting. And that terrifies her. If he moves on, where is she?

Hugo is saying something to her, and Lily turns her attention away from Teddy. "Sorry, what?"

He sighs. "I _said_, can't you convince her, Lil?"

"Honestly Hugo, I think you should go to Morocco. When else will you be able to go there?"

"Sometime that isn't Christmas. Mum'll never let me go."

Lily shakes her head. "If you explain it as some sort of great learning experience she'll have no choice. Let me do the talking." She stands. "Come on, guys, we should get going."

:::

Twenty seconds after Lily has successfully convinced her aunt Hermione to let Hugo spend Christmas with Ris, the fireplace in her family's living room flares green again and her uncle Charlie appears, his eyes a match for the ferocity of the flames. "Lily Potter. How could you tell us that you're not coming back in a _letter_?"

Her parents fled the room during her conversation with Hermione, but Lily glances around anyway, hoping for some escape from this conversation. Seeing none, she kneels in front of the fireplace and says, "I'm sorry, Uncle Charlie, I didn't know how else to tell you."

"You could have Flooed!" He shakes his head. "I get that it will be weird for you, now that you've split with Adam." He hesitates and then plunges, "which is something I don't understand but it is your life and sometimes things happen so I won't give you a hard time about it, but I thought you loved it here."

"I did. I did. But like I said in my letter, I don't think I can work there forever."

"It doesn't have to be forever," her uncle reasons. "Just for a little while, until you find somewhere else."

"I'll get stuck, Charlie. I need to find something new, now."

He looks at her for a long moment and sighs, his breath fanning flames out toward her. "We'll miss you. I know we were all looking forward to having you here for good at the end of the school year."

Lily nods. She can't promise she'll come visit and she can't tell him she's sad. "I'll miss you, too."

"Of course you will." He nods. "Okay, then, if you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"I'll see you...sometime, then."

"See you." She falls back onto her heels and stands and he disappears, back to Romania.

Her parents are waiting for her in the kitchen, and they don't say anything at first. Ginny hands her a mug of coffee and Harry ruffles her hair the way he used to when she was four. Her father finally asks, "Do you know what you want to do?"

Lily holds her coffee in her mouth for a moment, stalling, but her parents appear willing to wait her out. When she finally swallows, her dad raises an eyebrow. "So?"

"I don't know," she lies.

Ginny nods and turns back to the fridge, but Harry is still looking at her. "Are you sure?"

"Yup. I don't have a clue. I'm going to go up and settle in." She grabs her rucksack from the ground beside her, adding, "Thanks for the coffee," as she disappears up the stairs.

Her bedroom is the first one on the second storey, tucked beside James's long-ago abandoned cave and across the hall from Albus's still-disastrous teenage warzone. She kicks the door open and sighs at the sight.

For the last seven or eight years she's spent less time in her childhood bedroom than she has at Hogwarts or Romania or in any of the various villas and condos listed under Ris's mother's name across the world, and her room still reeks of poor childhood decor decisions. There are crayon drawings of unicorns plastered to the violet wall behind her lace-canopied bed, and signed photographs of Lily and her brothers and cousins with various famous witches and wizards Spello-taped to the space in front of her desk, which is cluttered with magic markers and glitter pens. The two low bookshelves beneath her window are full of thin paperbacks—stories of naive girls falling in love with their best friends and getting happily ever afters at age fifteen.

She kicks her door closed behind her and reaches over her bed to tear down the most offensive of the unicorn pictures: one that Victoire had drawn for her when she was five or six, and that Lily had coloured with a horrible shade of orange crayon.

She crumples the paper and tosses it toward the rubbish bin by her door just as her mother appears, carrying a plate with a sandwich and crisps on it. "I thought you might be hungry." Ginny glances at the wad of paper at her feet and raises an eyebrow. "Unless you're too busy dismantling your bedroom?"

"Oh, thanks." Lily takes the plate from her mother's hand and sets it on her desk, sending a few broken crayons rolling. "I just thought it might be time to get rid of some of those," she nods her head back at the drawings. "They're a little dated."

Ginny's gaze softens as she takes in her daughter's room. "It doesn't really fit you anymore, you're right." She crosses to the bed and leans in to examine a drawing of a purple unicorn that Lily had tacked to the wall. "This one's name is 'Amethyst Angel.' You certainly were...creative."

Lily shakes her head. "Idiotic, more like."

"You were a child," Ginny points out. "Well, if you're going to take all these down, at least try to get them in the bin, won't you?"

"Gee, thanks for the advice, Mum. Like I was aiming for the floor."

"Oh, Lily." Ginny shakes her head. "It is nice to have you home." And then she tugs the drawing of "Amethyst Angel" from the wall and crumples it, sending it into the bin with barely a glance. "But you've never been an athlete."

Lily smiles and shrugs. "The family didn't need another one."

"That's true." Ginny smiles. "I'll leave you to it, then."

"Thanks, Mum."

Ginny leaves the door open when she leaves, and Lily turns back to the array of embarrassing drawings on the wall. It takes her nearly an hour to clear her room of her childhood, and once she's finished she looks at the overflowing bin and the bags of old books and discarded notebooks and papers and she wonders how seventeen years (or ten) could fit so easily into such a small space.

She lugs the bags downstairs and her mum calls her into the kitchen after she's stuffed them into the bin outside. "You up for dinner at the Burrow tonight? Your gran wants to entertain sometime, since we're having Christmas here, and she thought tonight would be as good as any."

Lily scrubs her hand over face before nodding. "Sure, that sounds good. I'll just go up and shower and I'll be ready."

The evening at the Burrow is uneventful, although Roxy does put something foul in Lily's wine glass, so she retaliates with a layer of wax at the bottom of her cousin's slice of cake. She and her parents get back before midnight, and Lily crawls into the bed in her empty room and closes her eyes, expecting sleep to come the way it does at school: quickly and with no warning.

But the darkness of her bedroom suddenly seems suffocating, and the emptiness of the walls around her seems lonely and she wishes for the stuffed unicorn she tossed unceremoniously with her drawings earlier that day. She lies awake for hours, counting the seconds until they turn to minutes, and staring up into the darkness, imagining shapes in the lace above her.

She doesn't fall asleep until the sky is grey with light and wakes up to pounding at her door barely two hours later. "Yo, Lil, get your lazy arse out of bed. It's time to go find a Christmas tree!"

At that moment, Lily wishes that Albus had stayed with the Cannons for Christmas. She doesn't respond, just pulls her pillow over her head and buries her face beneath her sheets.

That doesn't work, of course. She hears Al mutter, "_Alohomora_" outside her door and then he's beside her head, shaking her shoulder so hard she almost slides off the other side of bed. "Come on, Lily. Get up, get up! Don't you want a good tree?"

"I don't give a damn about the tree. I just want to sleep." Lily's speaking into her sheets so Al can't make everything out, but he senses the lack of Christmas spirit.

"That is unacceptable." He moves to the foot of her bed and flips the duvet up so her feet lie uncovered and he grips her ankles, tugging her abruptly off her bed and onto the floor. "Now," he tells her, opening her wardrobe and flipping a jumper from a hanger on top of her, "get dressed and meet me downstairs. I'll make coffee."

"You suck, Albus," she calls after him, but she sits up and reaches for the jumper he picked out for her anyway. It's not horrendous.

Tree-shopping with Albus is always miserable. He is a perfectionist when it comes to all things Christmas, and by the end of the three hour ordeal Lily is ready to _Avada_ _Kedavra_ him and throw herself onto a pile of pillows. But after tree-selections come tree-decoration, and Albus's reign of Christmas-related terror continues well past setting the tree alight with fairies and conjuring a star for the top.

"And now it's time for hot chocolate and _Twas the Night Before Christmas_!" he crows at ten. Lily stares at him.

"Merlin, Albus, when're you going to grow up?"

His eyes narrow and he glances over his shoulder toward the kitchen, where his parents are searching for the chocolate leftover from the year before. "What's eating you? You've been so...Grinch-like...today."

"Nothing. I'm fine," Lily stands and brushes pine needles from her jeans onto the floor. "I'm just tired."

Albus doesn't look away. "I thought you liked Christmas."

"Of course I like Christmas. Who doesn't? I'm just tired, Al."

He shakes his head. "This isn't tired-Lily. This is depressed-Lily."

"Let it go," Lily begs. "I'm going to bed."

He watches her leave, but he doesn't say anything else.

Even though her eyes fall closed while she's still undressing, Lily can't fall asleep again. She rolls over at one and tosses her pillow against the wall, but even that doesn't help.

At two she gets out of bed and walks to her window. She presses her cheek against the cold glass and watches as her breath mists on the windowpane, obscuring the view of the skeletal shapes of leafless trees lining the side yard.

She grabs her pillow and her duvet and slips out of her bedroom, turning down to the curving staircase at the end of the hall. It leads up to the tower at the corner of their house—the odd result of Victorian-era architecture and the room Lily's parents expanded for Teddy before James was even born.

The door creaks when she opens it; no one's been here in a very long time. She fumbles for the light switch and the small circular room glows so bright that she squeezes her eyes shut for a few moments before she feels brave enough to risk her eyesight.

He'd visited here for at least a month each year up until he left Hogwarts, and the room is a throwback to seventeen-year-old-Teddy. There are posters of bands and Quidditch players (mostly girls) on the walls, and a stack of textbooks coated in dust on the desk. A couple of pairs of ratty trainers have tumbled out of the wardrobe, and he's left a few jumpers rumpled on the floor by the window closest to the door. She's surprised to see that his bed is still made up with blue flannel sheets, and that there's a framed photograph on his bedside table. She drops her duvet and pillow on the floor and picks up the picture, wiping the glass clear of dust. A teenage Teddy waves at her, while the images of Graham and Victoire snog at the far corner. She smiles and replaces the photo.

Lily sits down on the bed and looks around her. Teddy's room doesn't really look like him, but it feels like him, and it feels more like home than hers does, so she turns off the lights and crawls beneath his duvet.

She lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling. He'd stuck glow-in-the-dark stars there at some point, and they emit a faint green light. They're scattered randomly; Teddy had never been good at Astronomy.

She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

:::

By Christmas day, Lily hasn't touched her own bed in over a week. She sneaks into Teddy's old room as soon as Albus's light goes out, and she gets up just after dawn, beating her parents and brother to the kitchen and, more importantly, the coffeepot. It's almost as if she's having an illicit relationship with Teddy's room, and she flinches whenever someone goes too near the staircase, like they'll find out her secret by proximity. She's starting to feel more anxious about sleeping in Teddy's room than she ever did about sleeping _with_Teddy, and she realises there's probably something psychologically the matter with her. Sleeping in his room, though, it's like she's trespassing on a life that she wasn't even a part of. As a teenager, Teddy wasn't even visible in her periphery. And now she's taking herself to his adolescent sanctuary every night, curling up beneath his duvet and pressing her nose into his pillow, pretending she can find shapes in the glowing stars on the ceiling, dreaming of him. She thinks it's sort of sick, actually.

But she can sleep there, in his room, so she keeps going back. And on Christmas Eve, when her parents and brothers are arguing over where best to have the Christmas meal—the dining room, kitchen, or the living area (even though the answer seems perfectly obvious to Lily)—and she can't take how mundane it all is, she excuses herself and climbs the two flights of stairs to Teddy's room, and she lies down on the floor and closes her eyes. Christmas was easier surrounded by dragons. But then, she had been happier. She hadn't had a long list of mistakes trailing behind her, clinging to her skin like scummy tattoos, marking her as bad and bitchy and selfish.

She stays there on Christmas Eve until James shouts, "Lily, get down here! It's time to eat!" from the kitchen and then she returns a few hours later, crawling beneath his covers and wishing she could stay there until the world turns happy again.

There are too many metaphors to describe the innumerable Weasleys' descent on the Potter's home on Christmas day, but Lily thinks that none of them truly describe the chaos inherent in those moments of arrival. She stands by the door, continually taking coats and accepting kisses and hugs, for what feels like hours.

Dom grabs her almost as soon as she arrives, her hand small but tight around Lily's. "Come here," she commands, dragging her younger cousin to the couch by the tree and raising her wand to send the pile of coats hurtling down the hall to join their companions on Lily's parents' bed. "You need to tell me _everything_."

"Everything about what?" Lily shifts so she's not half-sitting on Dom's lap and pulls her knees to her chest, resting her cheek on her jeans and watching as Dom exerts more energy sitting than Lily does in any typical day. Dom grips her blonde braid in one hand, tugging at it as she flutters her other fingers against the back of the couch, one leg pulled to her chest and her other pressing a hurried rhythm against the wood floor with staccato taps of her heel.

"Come on!" She begs. "Charlie told me about the boy you were dating over in Romania and how you broke up with him and how you're not going back there ever again and I want to know _why_."

Lily has always loved Dom's directness, but at the moment she wishes that her cousin would get drawn off into some other corner of the family's overload of drama and forget all about Lily and her dragons—or lack of dragons. But Dom's sea-glass eyes are locked on hers, and so Lily has no choice but to tell her something.

"I grew apart from Adam," she tells her, "and the whole dragon thing—I loved it, you know? But then I started thinking about doing it forever and I felt trapped. That's all. It's really not all that interesting." She brushes an owl feather from her jeans and glances up to see that Dom's still staring at her.

"But you've always been in love with dragons," Dom says. "What'll you do now?"

Lily shrugs. "I have some ideas. We'll see if any of them go anywhere."

"Merlin," Dom sighs, "you and Teddy are just alike."

Lily blinks. The topics seem horribly unconnected, unless Dom knows something, or suspects something.

"When he first applied for the job at Hogwarts," Dom elaborates, "he wouldn't say a thing. He waited until he had accepted it to tell us. And here you are, keeping secrets." She shakes her head. "How is he, by the way?"

"I don't know," Lily hurries, "I only ever see him in class."

"I know that, idiot." Dom laughs. "Where else would you see him? I mean, how is he as a professor?"

"Oh!" Lily hasn't felt this relieved in months. "He's really really good, actually. Best professor I've ever had."

"You're joking." Dom leans in closer, her eyes scanning Lily's face for some sign of a lie. "You're not? I honestly can't picture Teddy as a professor at all."

"You'd be surprised." Lily unfolds herself from the couch and stands. "But I've got to go help Mum and Dad with the food. I'll see you later."

Dom doesn't respond; she's noticed Albus in the corner and she pins him to the wall with a question about Scorpius. Lily smiles as she hurries away. It's comforting how Dom stays the same.

Lily's leaning against the wall later, near where Graham and Victoire are talking to her parents, and she overhears Teddy's name. She inches closer despite herself.

"Do you know if Teddy's coming?" Vic asks.

"We haven't seen him in weeks," Graham adds.

"I sent him an owl last week," Harry answers. "He told me he'd probably stop by at some point. He knows we're starting dinner around four, so hopefully he'll come by sometime before then."

"Dom tells me he's been acting weird lately," Ginny says, "have you noticed that, too?"

"Like Graham said, we haven't seen him in a while," Vic says. "So yeah, I'd say he's been acting weird."

Lily drifts away, finding James standing by the table where she's set the prawn cocktail. He starts asking her about her plans for next year, too, and she keeps glancing over to the door, waiting for Teddy to appear. Guilt and anxiety are gnawing at her stomach. Tired of her evasive responses, James finally bursts, "But what do you _want_ to do, Lily?" and she turns her full attention on him.

"I'll let you know when I find out," she snaps. "Excuse me," and then she can't keep herself there anymore, beside her brother and among her family, watching for the man whose life she nearly ruined to come through the door.

She's upstairs and in his room in less than two minutes, and as she locks the door behind her she exhales, feeling peaceful for the first time in forever. Lily sits cross-legged on the bed she made that morning and pulls a stack of books from the bedside table, nearly knocking the photograph of Teddy and Graham and Victoire to the floor.

The books are all about defence and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and they're full of information that she could get from asking her father a few questions. But she doesn't want him—or anyone—to know that she's interested in the Auror department. Him, because he'll try to dissuade her from following him into that career. Everyone else, because they'll assume she's planning on using her father's position and his reputation to secure a job.

The truth is, Lily's been thinking about becoming an Auror and nothing else since last summer. And now all of her feeble excuses against the career decision have fallen to pieces. She wants to be an Auror, and if she has to sell her soul and piss off her father and suffer the judgement of the entire wizarding world, well, then, bring it on.

But not quite yet, she thinks, as she flips open the cover to the first book in the pile, a thick list of Defence spells that have been restricted to use in DMLE. She's not quite ready for all hell to break loose yet.

She gets lost in the information, and doesn't even notice how late it's gotten until she hears voices on the floor below her. She blinks up from the page—it's dark out, she's been reading from the light of her wand for at least an hour—and glances at the locked door to Teddy's room.

James and Dom are on the floor below. "I haven't seen her in ages. I had just asked her what she was planning on doing after Hogwarts and she got pissed and left. I thought she went to the kitchen, but apparently not."

"James, you prat, you should've known better than to talk to her about that." Like Dom had, Lily shakes her head. Her cousin raises her voice and Lily can hear the sound of her fist tapping against the door to her own bedroom, "Lily? Are you in there? It's time to eat. James promises he won't mention anything about Hogwarts or careers or anything else all evening! Will you please come join us?"

Lily looks at the door. She can't go out now, can't reveal her sanctuary to James and Dom. There'll be questions, especially from her cousin, and she can't answer them. Dom pounds at her door again and James says, "I'm really sorry, Lil. I know that must get really annoying. I wasn't thinking."

When they're met with silence, their voices fade; they must've gone into her bedroom. She hears them in the hall again a few minutes later. "She didn't go outside, did she?" Dom asks, her voice getting softer as she and James move toward the stairs down to the family room.

"I hope not. It's fucking freezing out there."

Once she's sure they're gone, Lily sets her books aside and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, like she's about to leave Teddy's room and return to the party. But as she stands and moves toward the door, she wants to resist. She hears people downstairs and outside, calling her name, and she feels guilty—again, still—but she doesn't want to leave.

There are more footsteps in the hall below, and then they're coming up the stairs to Teddy's door and she wants to hide, to roll beneath his bed or scurry into the wardrobe, but there's a wand tapping at the lock and the door swings open before she can act on either of those impulses.

And of course he's standing there; he's the only one who would think to look for her here. He stands in the doorway a moment, his cold brown eyes taking in the way she's standing, like a thief waiting for a verdict, and the stack of books on the bed and his rumpled duvet. He raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms, but he doesn't say anything. He swallows, and her eyes fall on his neck and stay there. She wants to kiss him.

"I—," she begins, falters, falls silent.

"Everyone's looking for you," Teddy tells her.

She nods. "Yeah."

"Are you going to come down?"

"I should."

He turns and starts back down the stairs, his broad shoulders tense beneath his red jumper. Lily doesn't move.

He pauses, turns his head to look at her. "You coming?"

"I'm sorry."

He blinks. "Now is not the best time. Let's go."

"But I want to talk to you," and she suddenly does. She wants to sit on the floor with him and tell him what she's thinking, why she's fucked things up between them, that she loves him and she's scared because feeling this way doesn't come naturally to her. It's a fight, every emotion is a fight, and she wants him to know.

Lily really wants Teddy to believe her. He won't, though; she sees it in the stiff set of his lips and the emptiness to his eyes.

"Now is not the time," he repeats, and Merlin, she wishes she hadn't told him about Adam. She could have ended that without him finding out, probably. If dishonesty could have saved her the sight of that expression on his face, she'd have lied forever.

"I'm sorry," she says again. He's turned around and continued down the stairs, not looking back this time. She follows, anyway, shutting the door behind her.

Teddy spends the night, because he's been invited out to a pub that night and to a Quidditch match with Al and James the next day and her parents convince him that there's no point in going back to Hogwarts. She's not sure _how_ they managed to convince him, because when they first make the suggestion, after gifts, he replies, "No," so adamantly that Dom stops bothering Louis to turn and stare open-mouthed at him.

But somehow they do, and Teddy disappears into town with her brothers while Lily is still washing up. She crawls beneath the covers in her own room for the first time in over a week, but she doesn't even bother closing her eyes. She knows she'll be spending a sleepless night.

So she sits in the empty silence of her bedroom and waits for morning.

Lily thinks that she hears her brothers and Teddy leave before six, and she escapes from her bedroom to the kitchen still in her nightshirt and begins boiling water for coffee. While she's standing at the stove, the side door swings open and all three of them stumble inside, their faces red from the cold and snow lining the creases in their jackets.

"Morning, Lily," Al mutters, collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table. James steadies himself on the counter as he unties his snow boots and Teddy stands stiffly by the door. She can feel his eyes on her. Or maybe she's only imagining them.

"Hi." She hesitates. "I thought you all had a Quidditch match to get to?"

"Cancelled," James explains. "Can you believe it? They don't cancel Quidditch, ever, but apparently both teams got food poisoning at a Christmas dinner they had at some restaurant yesterday, and none of them can stop hurling long enough to get on their brooms."

"Pleasant," Lily says. "Do you all want coffee, then?"

"Please," Al begs. "We got up _so _early."

James has finished removing his boots and he comes closer to Lily. "Speaking of, what're you doing up? Are you going somewhere today?"

Lily shakes her head, lifting the steaming kettle from the hob and turning her face away from James. "No."

Albus is on her other side, suddenly, and he reaches out and tilts her chin up. "You look exhausted. Did you not sleep well?"

Lily tries to bite back the sardonic snort that rises at that, but she can't, and Albus raises his eyebrows. "I take that as a no. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she says. "I must've had too much caffeine yesterday or something."

"Caffeine doesn't affect you," James informs her. "You were pretty much born immune."

"Well, whatever, I just couldn't sleep last night. I'm fine."

"I think you're lying," Al tells her. "What's wrong?"

"You can tell us," James says as he takes the kettle from her. Al grips her shoulders and directs her to a chair at the table. "We're your brothers. And Teddy. Who's basically a brother." She feels nauseous. "We're here for you."

She doesn't look at Teddy. "I am fine. Stop pestering me."

"Come _on_, Lily, we know you better than that." James sits down across from her and shoves a coffee cup across the table at her. She can feel Teddy behind her, still standing in the doorway. She knows he must be dying to flee, to hop in the fire and go back to Hogwarts, but that he's torn between leaving without saying goodbye to her parents and escaping before she says something to get them in trouble. Or explodes, sending waves of uncontrollable magic looping around the house.

She doesn't respond to James and Albus taps her on the head, tugs at her messy ponytail, and says, "We won't judge you, we promise."

She drops her head to the table and mumbles, "I really fucked up."

Teddy pulls out a chair at the table beside her, she sees the legs scrape against the tile floor and his snow-damp jeans take their place on the seat. He taps one hand against his thigh as soon as he sits down. Merlin, is he nervous. But he's not leaving. Maybe that means something.

Maybe she's being stupid, again.

"How'd you fuck up?" Albus asks, concern deepening his voice.

How can she put it into words, with Teddy sitting there, hating her? "I cheated on Adam."

"Adam, the boy you just broke up with?" James clarifies. She nods against the tabletop. "That's not a huge deal, Lil. Merlin knows I've done that often enough."

"But by the end," she says, ignoring him. The prat. "By the end I didn't even like him anymore. I stopped liking him last year, but I just stayed with him because I didn't know what I'd do if I hurt him. And then," and she wishes she were talking to Teddy, just to Teddy, that she weren't using her brothers as a shield, "and then..." It would be so much easier if she were telling him. She lifts her head and turns to look at him. He's examining the whorls in the wood table, and he doesn't lift his gaze to hers even as she says, "And then I fell in love with someone else."

"Who?" James bursts. Albus elbows him.

"Oh?" he prompts, expecting Lily to expand.

She does. She looks away from Teddy—he's ignoring her still and it hurts too much—and turns to Albus. "But I still didn't break up with Adam. And then when I realised that I was seriously fucking all of us over, I told him about Adam. And..." everything had ended.

"He didn't take it well," James supplies.

"Not very."

"And then you broke up with Adam?" Albus asks, his voice hard.

"Yeah, but I didn't tell him why. I couldn't hurt someone...like that...again." _I'm sorry_, she thinks.

"I bet," James says, "I bet the guy you told, the one you fell in love with, or whatever," his voice is a little derisive but he's the jaded one, so it's okay, "I bet he's happy that you were finally honest with him."

"What do you think, Teddy?" Albus's voice is sharp, and Lily glances at him. Teddy has finally looked up from the table and Al's green eyes are locked on Teddy's brown ones. Al's expression is accusatory. He can't know, but _oh_, _Al_. What if he does?

Teddy clears his throat. "I think James is right." The words seem to have cost him a lot, his shoulders drop and he jerks his eyes away from Albus's. But Al doesn't stop looking at him.

"And that's it?" Al asks. "That's all you have to say."

"What...?" James asked, looking from his brother to his friend and back again, and then suddenly his expression darkens. "This girl," he begins, "this girl you were talking about at the pub last night, it's Lily?"

Oh, Merlin. Oh, fuck. Oh oh oh. Lily's heart pounds loudly in her ears and _oh_, she feels like the worst kind of idiot.

Her brothers aren't looking at her. "You know that's illegal, right, Lupin?" James asks.

"Also, seriously sick." Albus adds.

They both push away from the table and come around it, their steps like something out of a textbook on duelling. They reach Teddy at the same time and stand over him. He's still sitting beside her, his hands on the table, his face unreadable. But his eyes are dark and miserable and she wishes she had kept her stupid mouth shut.

Her mind scrambles to come up with something—anything—to make this better. But she feels empty.

"I didn't mean to start anything." Teddy's voice shakes.

"Oh, good, so you just had sex with our little sister for no reason?" Albus shoves Teddy's chair back and it falls back into the wall, rattling the dishes in their cabinets. He stands, finally, and Lily pushes back and crosses the kitchen, waiting for her brain to start coming up with words again.

"It wasn't—." Albus doesn't seem to care what he's about to say. His fist connects with Teddy's jaw before the older man can even finish his thought. Teddy reels backwards into the table and sends their coffee mugs shattering to the floor, pooling black liquid beneath the table, running beneath the cabinets.

Lily hears noises the hall. "Guys," she begs. "Stop, please, stop. This was my fault, it was all me."

She steps forward, grabbing Albus's forearm, gripping it so tightly that he turns to look at her, his eyes cold. "I came onto him," she confesses. "I didn't leave him alone. I went to him. Teddy just...Teddy just..." she glances at him and what can she say but, "He just fell in love with me."

"Oh, so that makes it better?" James steps around Albus and shoves Teddy, who's righted himself, against the wall just as Ginny and Harry burst into the kitchen, their wands raised.

Everyone freezes. Ginny and Harry take in the scene: Al glaring at Teddy; Lily with her hand on Albus's arm, gripping tight enough to make his skin white around her fingers; James with his hands on Teddy's shoulder, tendons showing how hard he's pressing his god-brother into the wall; the table moved two feet to the left and a lake of coffee on a floor scattered with the sharp-edged remains of four coffee mugs.

"What the hell is going on?" Harry's voice is enough to make Lily's heart stop. Her level of fucked has just risen exponentially.

"Teddy, here," James begins, but Albus cuts him off.

"It's nothing," he says, twisting his arm out of Lily's grip and tugging at the back of James's shirt, pulling him away from Teddy. "It's really nothing," he says again, when his parents don't lower their wands.

"Sorry if I don't believe you," Ginny says. "Sit down, all of you."

The four of them look at each other, and Lily can't keep the burn of guilt from working its way up her throat to behind her eyes. Her vision clouds and she blinks, tugging her wand from the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and clearing the mess of coffee from the floor, banishing the mugs to the bin. "We had too many anyway," she informs her parents, like they care.

"Sit, now," her father instructs, and they move slowly, slowly, to the chairs. Teddy rights the one he had been sitting in and Lily takes James's and Albus and James sit stiffly on either side of their god-brother.

Her parents stand in front of the table, looking from son to godson to son to daughter, their expressions impossible to read.

"So." Harry places his palms on the table and leans forward, his eyes resting on each of them for a long moment before moving on. "What the hell was that about?"

They're all thinking. Lily can feel unfeasible lies pile up in her mind, a rushing crash of too many unbelievable scenarios.

"Lily and I," Teddy pauses to clear his throat and all three of the others rush to fill the space with something other than the truth. But they stumble over the words and it comes out an incomprehensible mess.

"Lily and you," Ginny repeats, her voice wavering. "Please, Teddy, please don't say—"

"I was stupid," he says. He's speaking to the table again and oh, this could not get any worse.

"You haven't," Harry's voice is dangerous. Oh. "You have not been seeing my daughter—your student. You. Have. Not."

Teddy raises his eyes to his godfather's and nods slowly. If it weren't for Ginny sending a shield charm between her husband and Teddy, Lily's positive he would have been dead in the space between her heartbeats. As it is, Harry tosses aside his wand and leans across the table, his voice hissing low as his hands grip grip _grip _tighter on Teddy's shoulders. "Get. Out."

Teddy nods and James says, "Dad," and Albus continues, "You can't tell Hogwarts."

Harry breathes as Teddy pushes back from the table and silently and stiffly approaches the fire. "I won't, if he resigns." He faces his godson. "If you don't, though...I'll have no choice. You are not to go near my daughter again."

"Dad," Lily pleads. "Dad." She can't get anything else out, but it doesn't matter. Her father ignores her.

Teddy looks at Harry and says, his voice tired, "I know this doesn't make it any better, but I do love her."

He steps into the flames and Lily can't hold the tears anymore. They tumble down her face.

Her father looks at her, shakes his head, and leaves the kitchen. Ginny follows.

Albus and James don't leave her, though. They move to sit on either side of her and they wait out her tears. When she finally sniffs and wipes a finger under each eye and hiccups, "Oh, Merlin, I've been so _stupid_," they don't say anything, but they each place a hand on her shoulder and squeeze gently.

"We're sorry," Albus mutters. "We should have taken that outside."

Lily shakes her head. "None of that should've happened."

Her brothers don't respond. There's really nothing else to say.

fall

Teddy has decided that he likes this research gig. He gets to read books on Defence spells and try them out and write about them, and then people eventually read things he's written. That's pretty awesome.

Of course, it's lonely. He sometimes thinks back to the months at Hogwarts and wishes he could take back that horrible morning. He doesn't want to give up his memories of Lily—sometimes those are the only things that keep him going—but he wishes that Harry had never found out. His godfather hasn't spoken to him since that morning, and his only contact with the family is through Dom and Vic and Graham, all of whom have spent a fair amount of time pestering him about the reasons for the fallout.

He hasn't told any of them. Teddy doesn't want to see Harry's horrified, disappointed, livid expression on Graham's familiar face, in Vic's lovely eyes; he can't bear the thought of caustic, accusatory words spilling from Dom's perfect lips.

He gets notes from Albus sometimes, too. It's nice of him, but he knows that Albus still hasn't forgiven him. He knows he probably never will. It's the sort of thing, he's realised, that many people never forgive. And he understands, he does, but oh, he still misses Lily.

The _Prophet_ and _Witch Weekly_ and _Wizard's Independent_ have been full of her lately. Teddy receives his papers in the morning and finds himself staring down at yet another moving photograph of Lily, her red hair pulled up into a bun, wearing jeans and a DMLE tee-shirt as she arrives at or leaves the Ministry's Auror training grounds just outside of London.

The world is surprised. Teddy isn't. Lily as Auror makes perfect sense. It fits her.

She's in London every Thursday, the paper informs him, with the rest of the trainees, attending lectures at the Ministry. He refuses to leave his flat on Thursdays. If he runs into her on the streets, he's not sure what he'd do, but he's certain Harry would murder him for it. Of course, Harry would murder him just for looking.

His buzzer goes off as he's reading the latest article on Lily's exploits a few weeks into September and he presses the button to let whoever it is into the building. Dealing with them at his door is easier than trying to sort out who they are over the crackly intercom. Besides, there's a ninety-nine percent chance it's Dom, and she always makes up faux-personas over the intercom to piss him off.

When the knock comes at his door he shoves aside his notebooks and papers and crosses from his living room to the door. He tugs it open, says, "Honestly, Dominique, you were just here last night," and then stops breathing.

Dom isn't alone. She's got her arm wrapped around Lily's shoulders and she's looking pleased with herself.

"I am a genius," she says, ignoring Teddy's silence and brushing by him, pulling Lily along beside her. "Go on, tell me I'm a genius, Ted."

He can't say anything. He turns slowly and leans back against the door, steadying himself as it carries him backwards and clicks shut.

"Okay, I guess you don't see it yet. I'll explain." She grins at him. "See, you've been moping for months, since Christmas, and you had that whole abruptly-leaving-your-job thing and the whole Harry-suddenly-hates-you thing and obviously I was confused about it. I put quite a lot of time into thinking about it, and first I thought that maybe you had, like, stolen something, but that's really out of character so clearly that wasn't it. And then I thought you may have talked to Snape's portrait about Harry, which is a big no-no." Dom snorts, "Mostly because Snape hates Harry still—he's quite a fun painting to talk to, actually—but then I realised when I did that I didn't get excommunicated." She glances at Lily, who is staring at the floor. "And then Lily's been quiet and sad lately, too, even though she's doing something she likes." Dom tilts her head and grins at Teddy. "So I put you and her together and it all made sense. See?" She points at herself. "Genius."

"You're not upset?" Teddy asks because his brain is running too quickly to come up with anything else.

"Can't help who you love, man." Dom shrugs. "Anyway, I just stopped by to inform you that you should finally recognise my genius status. Oh, and to drop Lily off." She smirks and lets go of her cousin, passing between them to reach the door again. "Let me worry about Harry. And Ginny. Everyone else will be fine, I promise. After all, this whole fucking family is founded on that stupid nonsense of 'true love' or some shit. Besides, it's not illegal anymore, you idiot." And when she leaves they hear her mutter, "Like it would have killed them to wait a fucking year, honestly."

Teddy looks at Lily, who's still staring at the floor. She opens her mouth, looks up, says, "Merlin, I am so so sorry."

"For what?" he asks, suddenly terrified that she's moved on, that Dom's dragged her here and now she's going to disappear like some ephemeral fantasy.

"For Christmas, for cheating, for lying." She shakes her head. "I made such a mess of things and then I couldn't even fix it."

"Maybe," he shrugs, "maybe now everything will be okay."

"You think so?" Her eyes challenge him.

"No, not really. But do you want to try, anyway?"

"When I said I fell in love with you I meant it."

"I believed you," he tells her. And then they render the space between them nonexistent, and the layers of cloth between skin irrelevant, and those long months apart become forgettable.

**A/N:** I really liked this story until this chapter. And I liked this chapter when I was writing it, but now I don't so much. I hope you all enjoyed it anyway.  
>I appreciate reviews!<p> 


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